God Bless Her Rotting Soul

There was a few confrontations and eye opening moments this week.

It looks like Deb got her legs taken out by Lakisha. Having largely ignored Neil for some time now, Lakisha got her her in last week by asking Deb if she wanted her care taking duties taken over. Deb said yes not realizing that she’d let her relationship with Neil fall by the wayside, and even worse made it blatant that she was only using him as a means for extra money and shelter. Neil quickly fell in love with Lakisha and has no problems giving Deb the boot. Being called “a terrible person” seems to have struck a cord with Deb. Neil breaking up with her puts her whole life plan in jeopardy so I don’t think she’s going to let it slide and move back home.

Frank is holding it together and even has a moment of greatness at the end!

Fiona evicts the mother of 5 kids but she destroys the apartment leaving a mess behind for Fiona to clean up. In finding new tenants, Nessa’s girlfriend Mel decides to try and throw her weight around. She wants her friends to move in and Fiona tells her they can apply. When a guy comes in ready to pay the $1000 a month, Mel sabotages it and again pushes Fiona to let her friends have it. It’s an obvious powerplay that Fiona sniffs out right away and she lets Mel know exactly where she stands in the pecking order of the apartment building: below her. She tells Mel to knock the ghetto posturing off or she’s going to bring out the real Fiona on her. Infest her apartment with bedbugs, burn all her stuff and then evict her. Mel gets the message.

Lip’s mentor, Professor Youens, falls off the wagon and barrels through someone’s house. It’s really bad, his 5th DUI. Youens has given up and Lip struggles all episode to help his friend. It’s the strongest story this season with Lip crushed that the person who helped him get sober has lost himself and Lip doesn’t know what to do. Thankfully Brad is a phenomenal sponsor and is able to give great advice to Lip. Brad is a positive male influence on Lip, something he’s needed his entire life. It’s an exasperating time for Lip but he’s able to stay on his own two feet. Thank God.

Kev is worried about everyone’s breasts. His cancer scare has sent him into overprotection and he’s ready to give health advice to anyone who will or will not listen. In looking into his genetics (he’s worried about diseases he may have passed to his kids) he finds out he’s from an inbred community from Kentucky. Abandoned at a very young age, Kev has never known where he’s from and resents the people who let him go. V urges him to see if he can find his family to get some kind of closure and find his roots. When he reaches out to his possible biological parents, we find out Kevin’s birth name is Bart. This opens all sorts of doors as we know (as does Kevin) very little about his past and it puts us on the doorstep of a whole new set of wild characters and stories.

On the business front, Kev and V are up to their eyeballs in problems. They’re scraping by on money, The Alibi is getting few customers…the opposite of when Svetlana was running the place. Plus, Svet legally owns the bar, so from jail, she gets a realtor in there to sell the place. V can’t take it any longer and makes a B line to put things right. She goes to see Svet and they work out a new relationship. They won’t be a thruple again but it’s time they all get back to business together with Svet leading the charge and teaching V what she needs to know to provide for her own family no matter what happens. It’s a workable deal (Svet’s future was looking pretty crap, to be honest) and Svet leaves lock up, 3″ pumps back on her feet.

That leaves us with the Gallagher’s need to pay the piper. Frank first tells them that they just need to lay low to let this storm go by them, the guy doesn’t know where they live. And then he does. The left him with way too many leads to follow up on and Ian finds Carl being drowned in his own hot tub. Ian does his best to stop it and they’re given the ultimatum of paying him back what they stole are they’re all dead. The kids pull together as much as they can and it’s about 10k short. With no other choice, they have to go to Fiona. As mad as she is, Fiona is also a little happy about being right. She told them to leave the stolen drugs alone, that any plan that Monica and Frank is a good idea is a terrible one. After they all apologize to her (except Carl) she tells them what she did with the two bags of meth that Monica left her and Liam. It’s a trip to the graveyard for the Gallagher clan. In one of the more awful scenes in Shameless history, they dig Monica up and get the drugs out of the casket. Combined they have around 30k to give him, 40k short. The guy is not happy and guess who stands up and makes it work? Frank! With his newfound confidence and zen, Frank explains that if those drugs were Monica’s and his, that meant they were partners. They are giving back his share to him, what they can’t get back was Monica’s. Considering there’s nothing left to squeeze out of them, he takes it (and Carl’s hot tub).

Kill Process

The hits just keep coming. It’s been one riveting episode after the next and I’m still buzzing from how intense this one was.

The show opens with a flashback. Young Angela is watching a Back to the Future cartoon while guests to her home mingle about. Her mother has decided to forgo any more cancer treatment so this is more like a goodbye party. Angela is understandably not happy and Elliot’s father sits down to talk to her. Going over to Angela’s mother (which I think is the first time we’ve seen her) she’s talking to her lawyer, Antara (who we’ve met before through Angela continuing the fight with E Corp at the beginning of the show). Antara asks if she’s really sure she wants to stop, as an anonymous benefactor would pay for her continued treatments. She’s so far gone that she’d rather enjoy what time she has with her family than drag out the pain more. Upon mention of the benefactor, Angela’s father leaves the room and Antara pauses, asking if she said something. Angela’s mother waves it off but there’s something hidden in that moment that I think we’ll see revealed soon. Angela talks to her mother about how upset she is and her mother reassures her that she’ll always be with her, they won’t be apart forever. It’s hard to tell if young Angela really believes her.

Back to the present, we’re back to where episode 4 left off. Elliot is staring down Angela, confronting her about working with The Dark Army. She’s all in with The Dark Army and it stuns Elliot. He’s shocked when she says she met Whiterose and that this is all for the revolution they wanted to start, they just need to see this to the end. Elliot calls Whiterose a terrorist, a lot of people are going to die from this. Angela has taken Irving’s word as gospel, assured that the building is being evacuated. She’s straight up cold blooded corporate mouthpiece. When she tells Elliot no one will be hurt, she says it with this:

including your father and my mother.

After weeks of watching Angela breakdown, she’s gone off the deep end and she even digs into Elliot with this line telling him how involved she’s been:

I heard you were let go this morning.

And the race is on! Elliot is frantic to stop Stage 2 and rushes to the building to stop The Dark Army’s plan at the source. This caper is cut back and forth with Dom working her end of trying to stop The Dark Army. Darlene manages to pass her info of where Tyrell is but her superior, Santiago, isn’t so sure about its credibility and doesn’t act on it. Dom takes matters into her own hands and goes out with her partner to scope out the Red Wheelbarrow restaurant.

After Elliot gets into the building, he manages to get his laptop onto the network and gets to typing. Mr. Robot fights back by taking over. Elliot regains consciousness 15 minutes later in a cab leaving the area. Elliot runs back in and it’s an all out war between the personalities. Mr. Robot resorts to physically throwing Elliot around to stop him while Dom sniffs around the Red Wheelbarrow and Darlene confronts Angela about exploiting Elliot’s condition in Angela’s apartment.

Cue insanity. Angela is defiant and cold to Darlene’s anger. Santiago is The Dark Army’s mole. Tyrell gets the truth about his family (about his wife at least, I think) from Irving. He’s furious he’s been lied to again and in a surprise move to I think everyone, Irving doesn’t kill him. Instead, he gives Tyrell what looks like instructions and leaves him in the basement of the Red Wheelbarrow. Tyrell starts drinking like a maniac, handcuffs himself to a cot and starts a fire. The smoke tips off Dom upstairs and she tries to get through the locked back door but can’t.

Elliot makes it into the room with all of the power supplies that will explode when the area floods with hydrogen. But he can’t get to the emergency fire suppression system (that will suck all of the oxygen out of the room) because of a locked door. Then he notices it: none of the records are here. They’ve “both” been played. He pleads with Mr. Robot to help him get in there by typing messages into Notepad on a computer terminal and blinks back and forth into conciousness. After 4 or 5 desperate messages, Elliot comes too with the electric lock on the door broken and the door swinging shut. He races into the room and pulls the emergency alarm, saving the building.

Tyrell freed himself and ran hysterically out through the door Irving used to get to the street. He’s screaming about stopping the attack where he’s apprehended by the NYPD and Dom, who’s in shock that she found the guy she’s been looking for for months and he’s a mess and can’t figure out what he’s babbling about.

Angela and Darlene’s argument is halted by an emergency alert on their phones.

Elliot emerges from the building happy he stopped the attack when he notices everyone around him is solemn and distracted. He joins a group of people on the street looking at TVs in a store window and sees it: 71 E Corp buildings “exploded or caught fire.” Thousands thought dead.

A slap in the face of gargantuan proportions. The ultimate chess move by Whiterose to subvert Elliot and use Mr. Robot and Tyrell’s work.  Fine, if we can’t destroy the physical records in one fell swoop with a single fault line, we’ll just exploit 71 fault lines. Elliot never saw it coming. He had tunnel vision on the initial plan he discovered (came up with, really) and never considered the plans would be altered.

Absolutely nuts. Stage 2 happened and Tyrell is caught. What was on the paper Tyrell was given? Is the final play by Whiterose to ultimately to pin this all on Elliot? The full frame up that he started and executed this whole thing? Angela just got body slammed back to Earth, I don’t know how she’s going to function knowing she aided in the death of thousands.

*This is my 1,000th post!

Where’s My Meth?

Frank manages to be good for the entire episode. Not only that, but he’s a productive human being. He’s motivated to get on with his life, blaming Monica for turning him into an addict and cheat. He tells the truth in his job interview and the guy sees himself in Frank so he gives him the job. Frank flourishes, turning his typical nonsensical rantings into positive motivation for others and actually working while on the job. It’s a Frank we’ve never seen before: positive about life and not working a scam. All the kids know it won’t last and so does the audience, the only question is what’s going to flip him back.

Ian is wrestling with his feelings for Monica. He goes to a gay bar with his ex for a quick “comfort” hook up and it doesn’t work. He misses his mother while the rest of his siblings have seemingly moved on without a second thought. Carl sells his portion of the meth and Ian gets a terrible tattoo and demands that Carl stop selling Monica’s stuff from her place/actually a storage unit. He got oddly attached to the bag of meth as it was the “last thing of Monica’s” before handing it over for Carl to sell so he figures maybe he can find a keepsake in the storage unit.

Lip hates Charlie’s guts (jealous) and thinks he’s nothing but trouble for Sierra so he puts a plan into motion to sabotage Charlie’s sobriety. He gets a bag of cocaine delivered to his house with a pizza thinking that’ll be enough to ruin him. It works as Charlie stands up Sierra for their date (Lip agreed to babysit again so she could go out) but he sees Charlie at the next meeting he goes to. Charlie didn’t use but it’s still in his apartments. This puts a major guilt trip on Lip who dashes from the meeting to dump the coke. He climbs through an open window, dumps the drugs down the sink and gets bit by Charlie’s dog on the way out. It all works out when Charlie confronts Lip at the diner a little later. He thinks Lip just went in there to help him after hearing his story at the meeting. He has no inclination that Lip set him up to fail.

Fiona gets her first rough taste of dead beat tenants as a landlord. She’s completely open to giving them chances, after all she’s missed more than her fair share of due dates for rent over the years. She tries to work with the mother of five kids but the woman turns nasty on her so Fiona gets fed up and starts the eviction process. Fair but tough Fiona is in the building.

Liam goes to a friends’ house for the first time and the place is a mansion. His friend then comes over to the Gallagher house and while the kid has a blast (jumping on the couch while eating whatever they want, no one there to tell them when to go to bed) the mother is mortified when she comes to pick him up. It’s a big class divide.

With Svetlana locked up, V swoops back in to restore The Alibi. Kev is petrified about his biopsy surgery. He’s trying his best to fight off the fear of death from the surgery or having cancer so he acts like he’s seeing everyone for the last time. In great news and a funny moment when he can’t remember what “benign” means, he doesn’t have cancer. Cue party at The Alibi.

Deb is going out more and more leaving Neil with Frankie. Neil barely sees her and it’s causing growing resentment from him. She clearly doesn’t think they are a couple and he does (she’s got her eye on a new guy who she’s been meeting for drinks with when she goes out with her group). She’s using Neil and has tunnel vision in her own life (things are going well) so she’s oblivious to what she’s doing.

And then the worm turns. Carl and Ian go to Monica’s storage unit to pick through what’s left and are greeted by a guy living in there. A guy who demands his 8 pounds of meth back. They are screwed. That free money is no longer free. Next week we’ll see how the kids decide to deal with this very bad problem.

Runtime Error

Production went nuts for this episode, delivering a single long take journey through anarchy at E Corp! With some “stitching” to make the episode look like it was done in one take, we are now witnesses to one of the most riveting episodes of the series!

To start, whatever Angela injected Elliot with last week was some potent stuff as he seemingly comes to in the elevator at work. He’s having trouble remembering things. He feels off and his hearing is strange. Angela is standing next to him and it surprises him, he wasn’t expecting her there. Darlene calls him and demands that he meets her outside in 10 minutes.

When Elliot gets to his desk, he suffers through his neighbor’s obnoxious bragging about his weekend. In a message meant for us, Elliot says his real feeling known out loud. Elliot is really feeling off. The guy is at first offended but he turns it around to some self-reflection. Elliot tries to log into his computer and he can’t. He calls the help desk and while he waits, he comes to realize he’s not sure what day it is. What happened to his weekend…what’s the last thing he remembers doing? He starts to panic thinking Mr. Robot must have taken over…for days. He jumps on his neighbor’s PC to check his protections against Stage 2. His work has been found and pushed back.

Then he notices that the HR crew to give employees the boot is on the floor and the help desk says they can’t reinstate his access. He’s been made. We then follow Elliot from room to room, floor to floor as he tries to avoid capture. The only way he can fight back The Dark Army is if he stays in the building. He does his best but ends up pushed out the front door where Darlene is waiting for him.

He anxiously tells her they have to get back in to stop the attack and she blurts out that she’s been informing the FBI since Cisco was killed. He’s stunned into his isolation, the whole world goes on mute. When he gets angry with Darlene for her betrayal she tells him about seeing “him” leave the apartment at 2 am with Angela. It’s Angela who’s been betraying him. The memory of seeing Angela and Tyrell together rushes back to him.

We then zoom around the front of E Corp and go crashing into the building as rioters rush the building leaving Elliot behind. Following a group up, we’re brought to Angela who’s on the phone with her handler Irving.

He tells her to get a package at the front desk of her floor and she doesn’t need to worry much about the anarchy. With package in hand, Irving tells her that the plan has changed and she needs to get Elliot to use its contents to get some work done in the building. I found it weird that he thought she’d be near Elliot at that moment and she seems pretty incredulous about it too. She takes matters into her own hands and in some harrowing navigation and hacking, she does the work herself.

Angela makes a successful drop of the stolen material and Elliot meets her near her office. Standing opposed like two guns slingers Elliot says, “Do you have something you want to tell me?”

This episode was nuts. More great moments than I can write about, they all need to be experienced first hand. It was an amazing storytelling experience with such care put into each scene and transition. A lot happens with secrets coming out and machinations of The Dark Army on display. China annexes the Congo and the man Whiterose told to support Donald Trump for president a few weeks ago is on cable news doing just that.

While Angela has been in with The Dark Army for a while now, she really stuck her neck out for them here. She almost gets hurt in a riot The DA put together but can’t actually control and she was seen by a woman who will probably be killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. How she’s going to handle the confrontation with Elliot is anyone’s guess. I don’t even know what he’s going to do. Major turning point and the clock is ticking for the backup building from being blown up. Angela made a naive attempt to get the target building evacuated beforehand but I think she’s about to get the horrible reality check that she’s complicit in killing a lot of people. She’s going to become the exact person she hates and swore to stop.

We Become What We…Frank!

Welcome to season 8! It’s time to catch up with the Gallaghers. Monica’s inheritance left the family with some decisions and we come back to the family not too long after last year’s finale.

All that meth meant a lot of potential money. While Fiona ditched her share in Monica’s casket, the others kept theirs and Carl is using his old connections to unload each bag one at a time (from what I could tell each is worth around $10,000).

Carl, out of boot camp for the summer, sells his first and buys some toys with it, the largest being a hot tub for the backyard. He’s thriving in the military and is sticking to the daily regiment to keep his newfound focus.

Debbie is hustling like only a single mother can. She’s working as a fee collector at a parking garage while going to school to get her welding certification. Using Gallagher resources, she uses a dog crate for Frannie while she works and leaves her with Neil when she goes to class. She’s still got a crush on her instructor and it’d be shocking if she didn’t try to get to know him. In another instance of that Gallagher grit, she handles an aggro customer at work like a pro. When Carl gets her money, she spends it on her own welding gear so she can practice whenever she wants. She’s committed!

Ian is pining for his ex something fierce. I guess it’s progress that the guy is willing to talk to him still, but Ian’s got his work cut out for him.

Lip is sober and the struggle is real. He’s got a great sponsor that looks out for him and gives him great advice which he desperately needs. And he’s more or less listening. In the same boat that Ian is in, Lip is pining for his ex just as hard. He’s doing his best to give Sierra her space and kind of ease his way to her again (going as far as paying an outstanding bill of hers on the sly) but her trash baby daddy has come back around and it makes that effort hit the skids. That’s a massive trigger for his drinking and he fights it off, which was amazing. I thought for sure that would make him relapse and in another major move, he gives the rest of his Monica money to Professor Youens to pay him back for footing his rehab. “Thanks for the rehab” indeed!

They’ve finally decided to make Liam a functioning character now. He’s aged up and given lines with his own plotline now. Frank got him into that private school last year and they’re using him as the token black kid to boost their diversity image to prospective parents checking the school out. He might be young but he knows exactly what they’re doing.

Fiona has reached the point for another quality of life change. She’s off Tinder and coming back around to being ready for a relationship. She’s laser focused on keeping all the plates she has spinning and turning a profit. A lot of work keeping the diner going (heads up, ICE is here!) and fixing up the apartment building she bought last year. Looks like she’s good at being a good landlord as she makes quick friends with one of her tenants (hello new character) and she gets a hell of a price for the first apartment she fixed. Sounds like there are some real characters in the building so I’m sure we’ll get a wealth of stories out of them this year.

Frank. Does exactly what you think he did. While in mourning for Monica, he used all of his meth (he says he shared it if you believe that). And now that he’s come back to Earth from his high sabbatical (“Where the hell have you been?” ask all his kids) he’s re-evaluated his life. He’s wronged a lot of people so it’s time for an Apology Tour of the neighborhood. Yeah, Frank’s going to be busy.

V and Kev are struggling to make ends meet after Svetlana successfully snaked them out of The Alibi. Svetlana had great reason to (she did save them from themselves in a business sense) but V is furious. Svetlana has turned The Alibi into a Russian bar and V ain’t having it. Svet tells her it’ll all work out if they become a thrupple again and V says no with her fists. Kev is still working at the gay bar and doing some sanctioned (with V’s very clear guidelines) side work, he finds out he has breast cancer. Only Shameless can come up with that way to get an initial diagnosis. While Kev privately gets checked out by a doctor, V makes the move of the episode: she gets ICE to raid Svetlana’s bar.

It’s good to be back! Great start, let’s see how dysfuntional we get.

Metadata

There is a lot of division going on in Mr. Robot.

Let’s start with the family. Elliot confronts his sister about hacking him. In a clever move to keep her role with the FBI a secret, she tells him she had to because Mr. Robot has hurt her and she’s afraid of what he’s up to. Elliot at this point thinks Mr. Robot is gone (or dormant) so this new rattles him. With this knowledge, he invites Darlene into what he’s been doing.

This gives Darlene a new perspective. The FBI knows that Elliot has been working with Tyrell and now she knows that Elliot doesn’t know he’s been in contact with Tyrell. Elliot shows her the work he’s been doing to keep Stage 2 from happening and that prompts the question: If you have all this info, why haven’t you made an anonymous tip to the Feds? You can stop this and keep your hands clean. Elliot’s thoughts: I can’t leave behind what we’ve started. He feels responsible for what’s happened and wants to stop it himself. Privately, he’s still fascinated with the idea of the revolution.

Knowing that Mr. Robot is active makes Elliot’s life more complicated. There’s a whole countermeasure to what he’s been doing that he can’t account for. That’s a problem. He deduces that since he isn’t missing out on any time in the day, it Mr. Robot must be active when he sleeps. He wants Darlene to keep watch at night and follow him. He stations Darlene next door in Shayla’s still empty apartment (which could have some terrible foreshadowing meaning behind it).

So, this plan of espionage is how Darlene finds out Angela is involved with Mr. Robot.

Tyrell is beside himself in anger. Angela and Mr. Robot meet him in a secret location and they discuss how Irving, on behalf of Whiterose has made them commit to a time to destroy the E Corp records: September 29th. Oh, and Elliot has been thwarting the records being moved to the New York location, ruining their plan. Angela is confident they can get it all moved in time and Tyrell isn’t having it. He’s over his infatuation with Elliot, he’s nuts and is nothing but a problem now.

Mr. Robot throws his weight around at the effort does something to him. He loses control to Elliot and he now sees Angela and Tyrell together in the same room. Angela knocks out Elliot with an injection to buy some time.

Always the professional, Irving manages to calm Tyrell down and speak directly to his ego: Stick with us Tyrell, you were born to do this. Tyrell likes what he hears but has some new conditions in order to do the work. My kid, my wife and I are on a plane to the Ukraine the moment stage 2 is done. Tell my wife we’re leaving together soon. Irving, knowing that Joanna is dead, says sure thing.

Angela talks to Price about getting Elliot fired from his E Corp job in order to contain his anti-Stage 2 work. Angela and Price’s conversations have always been strange and this one is no exception. Angela wants to hide who Elliot is, so she tells him she needs Elliot gone for important reasons she doesn’t want to talk about. Through some awkward back and forth he agrees.

Angela returns to her kitchen with Mr. Robot in her kitchen. He’s panicking but she bets that she can explain away any concerns Elliot has when he comes back. Angela is doing her best to keep calm and forge ahead but a lot seems to be going wrong for her. Elliot might just go along with what Angela says just to appease her and then flee to Darlene.

Out of everyone, I’m worried about Darlene the most. Losing Cisco traumatized her in ways that can’t be fixed. She’s caught in the middle of her brother and the feds with no good way out. The walls have been closing in on her and there are few moves left for her to make. At best she can keep tabs on Elliot and try to steer him from doing anything worse (or getting killed). She straight up confesses to the hack on the subway to the girl that pickpockets her and the only thing she wants back is an old picture of her family. She regrets everything she’s done and wishes to go back in time to a simpler time. A sliver of time, no matter how brief, where she had a family that was intact. She leaves the picture in Elliot’s apartment.

Channel Zero is an anthology horror series in its second season on SYFY. I haven’t watched the first (Candle Cove) as No-End House was the first promo I’ve seen for the series.

No-End House is a creative take on haunted houses that pop up all over the country for Halloween. This particular house has a viral internet following as it seems to get only advertising online. Short teaser clips sent to people that are shared around until someone sees the house (an on the small side two story home painted matte black). When people congregate at night, the front door unlocks, allowing groups of people. Inside are six rooms, each scarier than the last. Most people bail out of the experience before they get to the end. There are all sorts of rumors about the house that draws people in, that the rooms are different for everyone, and making it through will change your life.

Main characters, Margot and Jules decide to check out the house together with their friend JD. They meet another guy, Seth, shortly after they find out about the house and he tags along with them.

Margot and Jules had been close childhood friends until Margot’s father died from a prescription drug reaction. After the tragedy, Jules left town for school, essentially leaving Margot behind. Jules comes home from break and she tries to reconnect with Margot. What better way than a haunted house?

Once in the house, Margot and Jules traverse the increasingly intense rooms with JD and Seth and two others until they are separated. They come out of the back the house to discover…they are still inside the house and it wants something from them.

Through the six episodes, the rules and secrets of the house become exposed. The secrets of the people also trickle out. It’s a cerebral trip through a dangerous and surreal world.

No-End House is a really creepy show. The set up with the house is cool and there are some amazing visuals once things going. Like any good horror/mystery story, subtle foreshadowing is all over the place and not everything is answered. You constantly question the motives of the house and the people. Each person has their own story, one that the house seemingly knows and exploits.

I think six episodes is the sweet spot for a show like this. Enough room to get a complete and complex story out without any wheel spinning. It’s constantly moving and delivering, there’s time for characters to grow (and die) but not waste time. The end is satisfying yet open-ended enough to create good discussions on what happened.

Season 3, Butcher’s Block, is coming up next year and I’m looking forward to it if this is the kind of quality I can expect. I’m going to check out Season 1 as soon as I can.

legacy

All about that Tyrell. The long gap of time where Tyrell was missing has been filled in. Turns out he really. really, missed Elliot.

So the Dark Army found Elliot and Tyrell back at the original f society HQ just after the five/nine hack. And Irving was managing that pick up team, so Whiterose has had him in his employ for some time. He separated the two and hid Tyrell from the feds while Elliot went on to commit himself.

It was a rough go for Tyrell, looking at video of his son while he was secluded in a cabin in the woods in New York.  Coding and chopping wood seemed to be his only two pastimes while he was there. Being so pull out of society damaged his psyche. Reading that your wife has filed for divorce will do that to a man. And as Tyrell said, if she saw him the way he was there, she never would have taken him back.

We got a sizable nugget from this separation: Tyrell didn’t know Elliot had a split personality. Every time he was with Elliot, it was Mr. Robot. When he talks to Elliot on the phone when he’s locked up (season 2), Tyrell gets upset that Elliot didn’t recognize his voice. Tyrell holds Elliot (the version he knows anyway) in high esteem. He tells everyone that will listen he has to be working with Elliot on Stage 2. It’s not until Elliot is recovering from surgery that Angela tells him about the two personalities. It’s Mr. Robot who wakes up first.

We get another glance of the machinations of Whiterose. The complications of Elliot breaking and committing himself brings us to Whiterose’s right-hand man first expressing his displeasure of the continued insistence on not cutting Elliot loose and moving on without him. Whiterose is none too pleased about what happened but he’s confident in his decisions. Keep an eye on Elliot while he’s there and pull the strings to get him out (which they do). And then comes Donald Trump on TV at the start of his campaigning to become president of the United States. Whiterose found another wildcard to bet on.

Undo

Elliot gets a job at E Corp on the recovery team and does everything he can to fix what he started. One of his biggest goals is to keep the physical files from being brought to the New York location to prevent the mass destruction of everything from being possible. When a wall comes up, he goes classic hacker to knock it down. He makes some good progress but when he’s away from work, he gets crushingly depressed from being lonely.

After avoiding his sister (he thinks she’s a trigger for Mr. Robot), he talks to her. She says she’s ready to skip town and Elliot asks her to keep him company for the night. Darlene is working for the feds and hasn’t been able to give them any useful information. She thinks he isn’t working with Tyrell and they give her proof that he is. When Elliot is asleep, she plants something on his computer. But Elliot is asleep and that means she has an abrupt meeting with Mr. Robot that sends her running. Her software drop was successful, giving Dom and her partner access to Elliot’s PC. Well, sort of successful.

Price tries swinging his weight at Whiterose and it doesn’t work. Chalk up another brilliant scene for BD Wong.

Elliot’s therapist, Krista Gordon, meets Mr. Robot for the first time. Chalk up another brilliant scene for Christian Slater.

A major character death! It took me by complete surprise, I never saw it coming. Just goes to show, when you get used to trampling people to get what you want, you can think you’re invincible. There can be consequences from being a pile of garbage.

Search / Ten of Swords

Halt and Catch Fire is a series of failures. A group of four brilliant people and those that get pulled into their orbit jumping to reach the sky and hitting the ground after each attempt. Sometimes their feet don’t make contact first.

Halt never found a big audience. It managed to reach and keep just enough fans to keep going. In fact, the production never knew if there would be another season when they finished filming each year. Thankfully we managed to keep this show on to get it to its conclusion.

I love where this show went. It transformed and expanded past just Gordon and Joe. Halt covered a lot of time, more than a decade, and that meant the tech nexus of each season got to change with it. Four people who met in the 80s and worked on the next big thing had to keep coming up with another next big thing. Their relationships changed just as much as the tech they worked on.

In just four seasons I got really attached to Joe, Gordon, Donna, Cameron and to an extent Bos. The acting so strong that I believed everything they went through together. Their emotions and rational were tangible through every moment. That all came together in a powerful final season.

Starting with IBM clone PCs, to Mutiny, to Comet, each project started with an idea. A thought that turned into a business that would start a wave or catch one that others were chasing. While there were great successes, failure was seemingly never far behind.

It’s the bounce from those failures, how they broke and managed to piece things together to keep going, is what Halt is ultimately about.

Joe and Gordon were the easy focal points of the show at the beginning. While they were a great base to build from, where Cameron and Donna went is what I think is the shows’ greatest strength.

Cameron and Donna are fantastic characters. Both brilliant from different angles, it was often their partnership what drove the show. Joe and Gordon would not have gone anywhere without them. So when they broke apart, there was a major shift in the show. The star-crossed lovers, Joe and Cam, split up as did Gordon and Donna’s marriage. No one could trust Joe. Cameron was stubborn and a flake, nearly impossible to work with. She hated the business side of tech while Donna embraced it. That was Donna’s anchor tied to her foot. She could be ruthless and would choose “the greater good” over an individual every time. Gordon was often caught in the current the others made, an engineer who was happiest when working with his hands.

Sacrifices were made by everyone and I always questioned if they felt it was worth it. Donna’s cocktail party at the end was especially poignant for me, sharing how she reflected on her career and what it did to her life.

I really liked the end. Bos gets his second chance, a celebration of life. Comet burns out in the only way it could: they were inches short again. Joe and Cameron fall back on their tried and true trait: run. But Joe goes in a different direction. Cameron reaches out to Donna, something I didn’t think she’d do. It’s not instant though, there’s an apprehension behind their potential future and they talk about it.

And this extends to Gordon and Donna’s kids. Haley travels abroad to find herself and in Thailand relays a beautiful experience to her mother (after only talking to Haley for weeks). Haley’s time working with her father at Comet was a pivotal time in her life. She also comes of age with her own questions about herself. She’ll continue her father’s legacy, using him as her inspiration and her guiding star.

No matter what there’s always talk of the future on Halt. The talk of the next big thing, what could be next, what can they do and how do they avoid what always happens to them? Cam says, “I don’t know, I don’t have any more ideas.” and then later the inspiration comes from Donna, “I have an idea.”

Nothing is perfect and few things work out the way we want. Gordon and Donna drifted apart. Joe and Cameron found that they wanted different things. A tragedy doesn’t signal the end. You just need to find the opportunities to follow and the guts to pursue them.

Power Saver Mode

Last season ended on a cliff hanger with Elliot shot and the season 3 premiere wastes no time in moving forward.

Some realizations come quick and a fundamental pivot has happened.

First, Tyrell is real. Elliot was wrong. In a power move to take control of his own mind, Elliot had challenged what he thought was a mental projection. That was a real gun and a real Tyrell. This leaves Elliot bleeding out of the floor and we’re introduced to a fixer for the Dark Army: Irving.

Now the Dark Army made some big moves last season. Darlene is scared to death as they put the pinch on f society with deadly actions. She couldn’t find Elliot for days and has basically crawled into a shell.

Irving comes to Tyrell’s SOS and saves Elliot’s life. They sweep the base of operations clean, Tyrell is who knows where now and Elliot comes to in Angela’s apartment. Elliot has a lot to process. He doesn’t feel Mr. Robot anymore. Maybe the shot killed him. But he was wrong about everything to do with f society. He knows what Stage 2 is (his own plan made without his knowledge) and Tyrell stopped him from shutting down the plan. Everything he wanted to do with f society was a mistake, it made everything worse and he can’t blame anything but himself. He has to do what he can to fix it. He has to shut down the backdoor to E Corps recovery effort so the Dark Army can’t destroy it all. He needs Angela’s help to get him a job at E Corp. Elliot has committed himself to being a white hat.

White Rose has other plans and her right-hand man (I guess that’s what he is) is annoyed. Tyrell and Elliot are unstable and he doesn’t understand why White Rose wants to keep working with them to finish Stage 2. He’s “more than capable” of doing it. White Rose is convinced she’s right, she just needs to keep Elliot’s rage focused on the task she wants him to do. And she has help.

In the gadzooks moment, Angela has turned. The Dark Army stopped her from going to the FBI. Angela has listened to what Whiterose has told her and is in her pocket. Mr. Robot isn’t gone and Angela can tell when it’s him and when it’s Elliot. Elliot has no idea Mr. Robot is autonomous again. Angela plays along with Elliot leading him where Whiterose wants and works with Mr. Robot when he shows up. Elliot may be a white hat but his other half is a committed black hat and he has no clue. It looks like Irving is her contact/handler/liaison to the Dark Army and Mr. Robot knows Irving. The scene with Angela is talking to Mr. Robot on the subway is nuts on so many levels. “How can you tell when it’s me or him?” “Your eyes are different. You don’t look away.”

This is straight up spy stuff and I love it. Irving first meets Elliot (conscious Elliot) and Darlene by getting them out of a bind and tries to get Elliot to go along with Stage 2. White hat Elliot says no and Elliot sneaks off with Darlene to close the backdoor in a hidden hacker party. He manages to do it but gets cut off by Whiterose’s men. So it’s a win for Elliot and a point of contention for Mr. Robot when he finds out. Mr. Robot is furious that Elliot will be pushing back on everything he tries to do with Stage 2.

Interesting realization: Elliot doesn’t know about Mr. Robot but the reverse isn’t true. But when one personality is in charge, the other one doesn’t know what they are doing. It’s a complete mind split with independent thoughts, memories, and actions. Now, how long until Elliot figures out what’s happening. I don’t think Elliot is blacking out when Mr. Robot takes control so it won’t be obvious to him. The first time we see Mr. Robot in the episode is when Elliot goes to sleep in Angela’s apartment.

Fascinating start, I can’t wait for more.

Who Needs a Guy

I planned on waiting for the series finale to write about Halt again but episode 7 knocked me for a loop.

Something tragic happens and I’m going to try to dance around it to avoid spoilers. You can find it elsewhere in about 4 seconds but I think it’s always best to go into a story blind so you can experience the original intent of the show creators.

I’ve been a fan of Halt from the very beginning and I didn’t realize how attached to the characters until last night. The arc of the show spans a long time, it’s a large chunk of these people’s lives. Cam, Joe, Gordon, and Donna are deeply intertwined. Gordon and Donna are family so their history goes years longer than the rest but they all go through some life changing events together. They clash just as much as they get along.

Knowing that this is the final season, I’m in the headspace that there is an end in sight. I’m going to be left behind at a point where the show ends and the characters live on without me watching. This season is very dense with growth. Haley and Joanie are teenagers and are much more than window dressing around the adults. Gordon and Donna are divorced but with their kids, they’re tied together for life and while they do still fight, they keep coming back together. Cameron and Joe keep finding themselves on islands, from their own doing or otherwise. Wrapping them together in the tech industry is a fascinating backdrop, something that’s unique to the show. Watching Cam get disinterested in her passion was terrible but someone new is now engaging her and more than that, pushing her out of her comfort zone. Cam is an intense person and seeing her potentially on a new track is very exciting.

There are two more weeks left, the finale is going to be 2 hours. After Who Needs a Guy, I have no idea what’s going to happen. It feels like I’ve watched the end, a major, emotional, world-changing shock that’s left me dazed along with the characters in the fallout and there is more to come. It’s an achievement that I’m so invested in fictional people.